Navigating Your Attachment Style: Somatic Therapy's Role In Connection and Healing
Photo Credit: Brooke Cagle, Unsplash
If you’ve ever felt stuck in a loop between progress and setbacks in your personal life, perhaps it’s time to decode your attachment style and relationship behavior. It can be difficult to break free from the same relationship patterns holding you back from feeling secure and open to change. Maybe you find yourself constantly seeking closeness but pushing others away when they get too close. Maybe you struggle to trust others and constantly fear being abandoned. Maybe it’s a mix of these reactions depending on your situation. Either way, there is a way to get you out of the cycle of uncertainty to start healing and connecting to yourself and those around you.
Attachment styles are deeply ingrained patterns formed in our earliest interactions with caregivers throughout our lives. Once you understand why you do something, you can regain the power to change it for the better. Somatic therapy untangles those complex feelings behind your attachment styles and paves the way for deeper connections and profound healing.
Understanding Your Attachment Style
Our bodies store trauma in different ways with those issues affecting how we relate to others and handle or react to conflict. There are internal and external conflicts ranging from our childhood to current situations with factors that impact how we think, feel, and behave. Learning your attachment style better equips you to build stronger connections with others, achieve professional goals, and improve your mental and emotional well-being. Here’s a breakdown to help you understand the four attachment styles:
Secure Attachment—When growing up with healthy attachment, people feel comfortable with intimacy and openly seek support from others when needed. They have a positive view of self and other relationships with deep connections.
Avoidant Attachment—With avoidant attachment, individuals tend to avoid intimacy and closeness in relationships often due to a fear of dependence or rejection. They may prioritize independence and self-reliance as a safeguard.
Anxious Attachment—People with anxious attachment crave closeness but fear abandonment. They may become overly dependent on their partners and have a negative view of themselves when certain insecurities come up.
Disorganized Attachment—Also known as anxious-avoidant attachment, this style is characterized by conflicting behaviors stemming from traumatic experiences or inconsistent caregiving. Those with disorganized attachment struggle with trust and regulation of emotions.
By tuning into these behavioral patterns, you can gradually learn to tolerate closeness and intimacy without feeling overwhelmed. If you've ever felt like your moods are all over the place or your relationships feel more chaotic than comforting, Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF) may be worth trying. IRF is an intensive practice that helps turn that emotional turmoil into relational stability. At its heart lies 'Self-in-Presence'—a mindset that helps you learn how to handle uncertainty within yourself and disconnection with others.
Developed over nearly two decades of hands-on work from Eugene Gendlin, IRF is like a toolkit for facing challenges when feeling stuck, battling low moods and self-esteem issues, and even dealing with addiction. A trauma-informed specialist can show you which IRF techniques are best for your specific treatment. Once you begin to uncover your attachment style, you can improve your relationship with yourself and others.
Confronting Avoidant Attachment: Somatic Strategies for Connection
For those with avoidant attachment, forming and maintaining intimate relationships can be challenging. Somatic therapy addresses those underlying fears and deconstructs those defenses driving your avoidant behavior. If you are struggling with this attachment style, it may look like this:
Avoidance of intimacy
Fear of dependence
Difficulty expressing emotions
Dismissiveness of small or large relationship issues
Reluctance to confirm or clarify commitment
By unraveling these deep-seated fears and learning to lower defenses with avoidant attachment, you can cultivate deeper connections and find emotional fulfillment.
Navigating Anxious Attachment: The Somatic Compassionate Approach
Disorganized attachment often stems from early childhood experiences of trauma or neglect which leads to a lack of trust and difficulty regulating emotions. When you speak with your somatic therapist, they’ll help you integrate a more holistic therapeutic process to heal those inner childhood wounds. You’ll learn how to engage in your present situation to prevent symptoms that could include:
Constant worry about the status of your friendships
Fear of abandonment or rejection, even in stable relationships
Overdependence on your partner for emotional validation and reassurance
Heightened sensitivity to perceived signs of disconnection or disapproval
Difficulty maintaining boundaries and becoming overly enmeshed in relationships
With anxious attachment, you’ll need a compassionate therapeutic approach that honors your past to help you find emotional stability and foster healthier relationships.
Healing Disorganized Attachment With Somatic Therapy
Disorganized attachment is a mix of anxious-avoidant attachment combining elements of both anxious and avoidant styles. This leads to a cycle of seeking closeness with someone you may love, only to push them away when uncertainty creeps in. Honestly, this can be one of the most difficult to identify without the help of a licensed therapist. Somatic therapies can be used alongside other methods like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic therapy.
By blending traditional talk therapy with body-focused practices, you focus on healing deep trauma physically manifesting in your body. You learn to regulate your responses and communicate your needs effectively in relationships. Techniques may include body scanning, expressive movement, and touch therapy can also bridge that gap between fear and intimacy when dealing with anxious-avoidant attachment styles.
Photo Credit: Priscilla Du Preez, Unsplash
A Pathway to Healing And Connection With Somatic Therapy
Now that you have the breakdown of each of the attachment styles, it’s time to take the next step in your self-discovery and healing journey. Somatic therapy uncovers the root causes of your attachment patterns and develops new ways of conflict resolution within yourself. If you want to understand yourself better and live in Jasper, Indiana (or need telehealth) I have a 12-Month Holistic Counseling Program to support your relationship with yourself and your loved ones.
Take care of your physical, mental, and emotional wellness by advocating for yourself here and now. If you’d like to learn more about your attachment style and how somatic therapy can help, contact me here for your introductory session.